ANNUAL REPORT 7/06 - 6/07 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Director’s Statement 3 I. Organization and Administration A. Administration 5 B. Executive Committee 5 II. Research A. Current Research Programs 5 B. Publications 6 C. Public Talks and Colloquia 6 D. Summaries of Significant Findings 6 E. Research Seminars and Activities 15 III. Graduate Training A. Ph.D. and MA Students 18 B. Graduate Advisory Council 20 C. Undergraduate Training 21 IV. Communication A. Conferences 22 B. Conferences Organized by IMBS Members 23 C. Future Conferences 24 D. Visitors 24 E. Colloquia Series 25 V. Budget A. Appropriations and Expenditures 31 B. Extramural Funding Activity 32 VI. Appendices A. Current Faculty Members 36 B. Scientific Publications 42 C. IMBS Technical Reports 59 D. Colloquia and Conferences of IMBS Members 60 E. Faculty Awards/Achievements 74 F. Graduate Students Affiliated with the IMBS 80 G. Visitor Letters 82 2 Director’s Statement Simply stated, the main thrust of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences (IMBS) is to do whatever we can to encourage the development and use of mathematical tools to advance interdisciplinary research in the social and behavioral sciences. This is true both for UCI and for the various academic disciplines that are represented within the IMBS. While this report describes several ways in which we have done so over the last academic year, I want to call attention to a couple of our activities. Above all, I want to call your attention to the research activities and recognition of our IMBS members. I always find it a true delight to review, by reading through the descriptions, the highly varied accomplishments that have been made by our colleagues. I welcome you to join me by reading what is reported in Section II-A. An important contribution for any interdisciplinary research institute is to create new ways in which researchers think about their areas. IMBS has experienced success in this area in different ways. As one example, in my letter of last year I described the success of our “Social Dynamics and Evolution” group, where ideas of mathematical complexity are used to analyze human societal issues. Manifesting an “evolutionary” change in their research interests, which resulted from a more careful examination of the different topics within human societal complexity, this fall they changed the name of their unit to a more appropriate “Social Dynamics and Complexity.” A portion of their activities is described in Section II-E. As reflected by the “mathematical” part of the IMBS name, one of the goals of our research institute is to find ways to incorporate the muscle power of mathematics as a way to better understand and resolve the complex problems of the social and behavioral sciences. As such, I am delighted to report that during this last year a new development emerged by bringing together parts of our evolutionary dynamics group (which meets weekly to describe the dynamics of evolutionary processes and some of the consequences) with psychologists who are interested in vision. A quick way to suggest what resulted is to (incorrectly) assert that Eskimos can detect 25 different versions of white. OK, so this statement has been shown to be wrong, but it accurately captures the sense that color categorization has a strong cultural dependency. The accompanying issue, then, is to understand the dynamics of how all of this comes about. In doing so, there are all sorts of related, complicating issues such as to understand the role played by “mutants” in society, such as those individuals who are color blind, in determining the final form of these categories. By combining techniques from mathematical dynamics with results and questions from psychology, this newly formed IMBS research group created an interesting explanatory model. This work, which is continuing under a grant the group recently received, is also described in Section II-E. An IMBS conference on this topic will be held in March 2008. In my letter of last year, I described how the IMBS brought together mathematicians and psychologists interested in other, more technical aspects of vision to meet biweekly at the IMBS to compare and discuss issues and approaches. In November of this year, an IMBS conference will explore questions and issues developed from these discussions along with researchers 3 coming from outside of UCI. This gathering should be an informative conference; check the conference link of the IMBS webpage http://www.imbs.uci.edu for more information. While the IMBS has had a visitor program starting from its founding days, we are trying to find ways to extend it. This venture is important both as a way to import new ideas to our researchers and as an approach to export to the general community contributions that are being made within the IMBS community. Comments about their visits from some of our visitors can be found in Appendix VI-G. But I want to call attention to Simon Levin, the 2005 Kyoto Prize winner, who spent winter term of the last year at the IMBS. While we may have overworked him, (with his several lectures, colloquia talks, co-organizing an IMBS workshop, etc.), Simon expressed interest in returning. We look forward to his return! An important feature of the IMBS is the training of the next generation of future researchers. Under the guidance of Louis Narens, who is chair of our graduate program, the IMBS graduate activities purposely go beyond embracing the students who are formally enrolled in our program to warmly include graduate students on campus who have any interest in mathematical social and behavioral sciences. In doing so, we are creating a community of graduate students who can advance the IMBS goals. Indeed, our outreach efforts are reflected by all of those students who enroll or attend our IMBS research seminars (listed in Section II-E.), our active colloquia (listed in Section II-C.) (where we have a special session where students can meet privately with the speakers), participate in our graduate student conferences, join in with our student parties, and are supported by IMBS for summer research. Some of this is described in Section III-B. Although the focus of the IMBS is toward faculty and graduate student development and research, we are undertaking some projects to advance undergraduate training. As an example, the IMBS has contracted with the firm of Sanli Pastore & Hill, located in Los Angeles, to have an eight-week undergraduate internship over the summer. Last summer our intern was economics student Xing Lian (Sherry) Zhu. This year our intern was Patrick Banks, a mathematics student who recently reported to us how the program broadened his outlook. Also through Sanli Pastore & Hill, the IMBS runs a contest for the best research paper. As this brief introduction shows, the IMBS experienced another good year. But, this success would not be possible without the dedicated assistance and work of Janet Phelps. All of us thank her! Sincerely, Don Saari 4 I. ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION A. Administration The Director of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences is Professor Donald G. Saari. He reports both to the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and to the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies. An Executive Committee for consultation and decision- making regarding the long-term direction of the Institute assists the Director. (Section B below). The staff of the Director’s office consists of an Administrator and a part-time Administrative Assistant. Presently, some bookkeeping and personnel matters are being taken care of by the School of Social Sciences. Director: Donald G. Saari, 2003-present Previous Directors: R. Duncan Luce, Founding Director, 1989-1998 William H. Batchelder, 1999-2003 Graduate Director: Louis Narens Graduate Advisors: Marek Kaminski & Michael McBride Administrator: Janet Phelps Administrative Assistant: Grace Lee B. Executive Committee Michael D’Zmura, Professor of Cognitive Sciences Bernard Grofman, Professor of Political Science Katherine Faust, Professor of Sociology L. Robin Keller, Professor, Operations and Decisions Technologies Mark Machina, Professor of Economics, UC San Diego Stergios Skaperdas, Professor of Economics Brian Skyrms, Professor of Philosophy George Sperling, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science II. RESEARCH A. Current Research Programs The 59 members of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences (IMBS) and their research interests are listed in Appendix A. The IMBS is partitioned into five research clusters. These are listed below and should be considered as informal intellectual groupings, rather than formal structures. 1. Measurement Theory, Foundational Issues, and Scaling Models: Antonelli, Barrett, Batchelder, Burton, Falmagne, Lefebvre, Luce, Maddy, Narens, Romney, and Skyrms 5 2. Statistical Modeling: Cognitive: Baldi, Batchelder, Dosher, Eppstein, Falmagne, Lee, Indow, Iverson, Riefer, Romney, Smyth, Steyvers, and Yellott Economic: Brownstone, Poirier, Saari, and Small Sociological/Anthropological: Boyd, Butts, Faust, Freeman, White 3. Individual Decision Making: Birnbaum, Keller, Luce, Machina, Narens, and Saari 4. Perception and Psychophysics: Vision: Braunstein, Chubb, DeFigueiredo, D’Zmura, Hoffman, Indow, Iverson, Palais, Romney, Sperling, Srinivasan, Wright, Yellott, Xin, and Zhao Psychophysics and Response Times: Brown, Falmagne, Iverson, Luce, Narens, and Yellott 5. Social and Economic Phenomena: Economics and Game Theory: Branch, Brownstone, Brueckner, Burton, Garfinkel, Komarova, Kopylov, McBride, Poirier, Skaperdas, Skyrms, Saari, and Small. Public Choice: Cohen, Glazer, Grofman, Kaminski, Keller, McGann, and Uhlaner Social Networks: Batchelder, Butts, Boyd, Faust, Freeman, Noymer, Romney, and White Social Dynamics and Evolution: Butts, Narens, Romney, Saari, Skyrms, Smyth, Stern, and White B. Publications The members who have replied report a total 194 journal publications (published or in press) for the current academic year. These are listed in Appendix B. The IMBS has a technical report series that is available to all members and qualified graduate students who are submitting a paper to a refereed journal or book.